


Consanguinity

by Echinoderma



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 02:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5610019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echinoderma/pseuds/Echinoderma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You seem distracted.” He sounds like his mother, clear and sharp-tongued; distaste, and some edge of impatience always present in his voice. Expectant, in the way he looks to her with an unusual amount of attention. </p>
<p>She hides her hesitance behind another sip of wine. On her tongue it feels cloying, tart. Biting. It leaves her salivating.<br/>--------------<br/>An aunt and her nephew enjoy a relaxing afternoon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consanguinity

It must be inherited. Her nephew has an affinity for wine.

 

The game board is set up, but neither of them have touched the pieces. A game of strategy, she had mentioned, hoping to pique his interest. Instead they had chosen to indulge in a bit of midday drinking- an aged and ancient bottle, filled with liquid heavy-bodied and sweet, almost a syrup. He takes a long, long sip from his fluted glass, utterly unaffected. It’s his third, her first, and she wonders if he might finish off the whole of it before she even has a chance for seconds.

In the past, she had made sure to make conversation; asking if he was acclimating well, comfortable. Pleased. He prefered isolation, but she made sure to invite him to dinner, to have him spend time elsewhere other than his room, other than the library, other than in his drafty, abandoned wing of the castle.

 

(He declined, always, in a few curt words. It’s fine, don’t trouble yourself, stop asking, _no. )_

 

This time, she is silent. A bout of melancholy had struck her, sudden and nearly crippling. It happens less frequently, less intensely as time marches on, but today everything seems off-kilter, desaturated and dull. A heaviness drags at her mind, at her limbs, and the sharp sting of alcohol on her tongue, despite her wishes, does nothing to help.

 

“You seem distracted.” He sounds like his mother, clear and sharp-tongued; distaste, and some edge of impatience always present in his voice. Expectant, in the way he looks to her with an unusual amount of attention.

She hides her hesitance behind another sip of wine. On her tongue it feels cloying, tart. Biting. It leaves her salivating.

“Sorry.” A bit of numbness spreads to her lips. The glass is almost empty. “I’ve been- thinking.”

“Oh?” His sip hides nothing, no flutter of nervousness, taken simply to taste more of that rich liquid. “About?”

Direct. She almost sighs. “Just- the past.”

 

 A chime, as the glass is set on the table, his hand still curled about the stem. He doesn’t avert his gaze like he usually does, doesn’t watch the dust blow past the window; he keeps his vision trained on her, waiting for her to continue.

“The war.”

“The first? Or second?”

“The first.” Instead of downing the last dregs, she treats herself to a refil. This time, she doesn’t bother to sip; she drains half of her glass in seconds. “Do you remember General Petrine?”

“Of the Four Riders.” He nods. He remembers General Petrine. “... She was very unpleasant.”

 “Yes. She was my superior for a time.” The taste at the back of her throat threatens to make her sick; sticky and sweet-slick with a bit of that acrid alcoholic bite. She hopes her rambling words might help to hold it back.

 

(Her tolerance had never been that high- _he_ had teased her for it, once.)

 

Quietly, murmured against the rim of her own glass. “I hated her. I hated her more than I almost thought possible.”

 

Her nephew lowers his gaze and returns the wine to his lips. She takes it to mean he has lost interest, that the conversation is over. There’s a flush beginning to creep down past the collar of his shirt, dusted over his cheekbones; perhaps his tolerance is also not so high.

 

(Perhaps _he_ would have teased him as well.)

 

Time is irrelevant to them and their kind; something that moves the sun across the sky and nothing more. It could have been any number of seconds, any number of hours, that had passed until he spoke again.

“... I killed her, you know.” He never smiles, really- only smirks. Still, the expression is strange on him; coy, with a bit of teeth jutting past his lips. He pours the last of the bottle into his glass, and he sets it aside, far from their reach. When he drinks, he watches her still- sympathetic, she hopes. His way of being comforting. “I enjoyed it.”

 ‘Thank you’ seems inappropriate and absurd and morbid and cruel- but her laugh is all of those tenfold, stifled against the back of her hand; the shroud of gloom about her pulled away, just a bit, by the revelation.  

**Author's Note:**

> hey!!!! do you ever think about how soren is ena's nephew? i'm dying :)  
> the title is like... a bad joke. "blood relation" as in they are connected through the literal spilling of the blood of someone they both hated. also they're both drinking wine. its symbolism? in my drafts its just called "untitled (that's the title)" so this is already infinitely better.


End file.
